Page 13

Roommate

Abi

“You’re sure he’s not a serial killer?”

“I mean, who can ever be sure?” I said into the phone as I put the muffins in the fancy commercial-grade oven and closed the door. “But my gut tells me he’s harmless. Rich and arrogant, but unlikely to wield a hatchet.”

“Serial killers don’t wield hatchets,” Lauren said. “That’s the old them. Serial killers are slick and contemporary now, Ab. Now they wield syringes that paralyze you so they can pull out your fingernails while you scream. They wield scalpels that skillfully carve into—”

“Stop it,” I said around a laugh. “I don’t want to hear this.”

My best friend, Lauren, who was a kindergarten teacher, filled her spare time by reading books about murderers.

She was a skinny brunette with the patience of a saint when it came to children, yet she was obsessed with true crime and psychological thrillers and had consumed every documentary about every terrible human who’d ever walked the planet.

Which was probably why she was equally obsessed with working out. She took boxing classes, martial arts, boot camps; she had something five nights a week, and all of them involved yelling and kicking.

I’d gone with her to boxing once, once , but I had to stop fifteen minutes in because I’d already taken my inhaler five times.

It was that intensive.

“Fine,” she said, “but I’m putting a tracker on his car just to be safe.”

“I have a feeling he’s got a whole fleet of vehicles,” I said, going over to the sink and turning on the water to let the mixing bowl soak. “Because he didn’t think twice about giving me his custom ride when I brought it up.”

“No worries,” she said, and I knew by the sound of her voice that she liked the challenge in that. “I’ve got it.”

And it was pointless to try to talk her out of it. My little friend was like a character in a spy movie, somehow able to figure out the what and where of what she considered her “assignment,” and once she did, she just took care of business.

Lauren was one of those people who if I described her hobbies to a stranger, they’d assume she was a nut; I mean, she definitely sounded unhinged. But she was actually the sweetest, kindest person I’d ever met and everyone loved her.

She was just protective to the n th degree.

She had a code of conduct she lived by, like a bizarro set of Lauren rules she’d written for herself that never failed to make me laugh.

For example, she would never use a tracker for her own personal gain; that would be inexcusable.

In her opinion, someone tracking their significant other, even if that person was behaving suspiciously, was an egregious invasion of privacy.

When she knew that Ethan, her jerk of an ex-boyfriend, was cheating, she refused to use her skills to catch him in the act because “that would be wrong,” but when my mom’s last boyfriend always carried big wads of cash, she was on the case until she uncovered that he had a side hustle that involved stolen catalytic converters.

I adored my weirdo friend. I met her on the playground in first grade, when we both used to look for cool rocks instead of actually playing with other people, and she’d been my partner ever since.

Although since she’d met Derek (who I loved), I had a lot less time with her, so I cherished our weekly phone calls.

“So you’re not wearing pants right now, are you?” she asked.

I turned off the faucet. “What?”

“Abi, you have a luxurious penthouse all to yourself, for free, so you’re cheating yourself if you’re not running around pantsless, jumping on all the furniture.”

I looked down at the cocktail dress I was still wearing.

Damn it. The designer dress that now appeared to have a little blueberry muffin batter on its skirt.

I wiped it away with my finger and said, “I promise you that as soon as I get off the phone, I’ll do the sans-pants runaround before diving into his room-size bathtub.”

“Ooh, big tub, huh?”

“It’s problematic big, actually, like a threat to the planet,” I said, grabbing my favorite sponge from under his sink and running it under the water. It was weird, staying in this apartment, because I’d cleaned it so many times that it felt familiar.

Like I was staying at a friend’s house.

“It’s the size of a hotel rooftop hot tub, I swear to God,” I said. “A team of Little League baseball players could fit in there.”

“Why is that a measurement?”

“Because whenever you try to use the hot tub at a hotel there’s always some stupid sports team in there…?”

“Oh. Yeah,” she said, and I knew she was nodding. “Why are they always there?”

“No idea. Hey, you can put bubbles in a whirlpool tub, right?” I asked, so excited to relax in the tub that I usually hated.

His bathtub was the worst to clean because of its size, but this time I had Stephen King’s latest in my backpack, so I was looking forward to reading with bubbles all the way up to my chin.

“Sure,” she said. “Hey, before I let you go, are you sure he’s not expecting something more than just pretend dating?”

“Positive.”

“Because that is a lot of money for what boils down to a couple dates. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t, but the way he deals with money doesn’t make sense because he’s so rich it’s inconceivable to us mere mortals. He said okay, take it when I said I wanted his car. He didn’t blink when I asked him for thousands of dollars. Declan Powell, as a human, doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Does he know it’s for student loan debt? Maybe that’s his thing, his cause.”

“Nope.”

“Does he know you’re a student?”

“Nope,” I said. “I figure the less he knows about my life, the better.”

“ Now you sound smart,” she said. “Tell him nothing . If you can leave at the end of this weekend and he doesn’t know enough to find you afterward, then you’ve done it right.”

“Agreed.” I ran the sponge over the fancified wood block countertops I loved and said, “Besides, if I’m going to use his cuckoo lifestyle as inspiration for a short story, I need to create a lot of space between us when the weekend ends.”

“True.”

After that we said our goodbyes, mostly because she had a workout class the next morning at five so she needed her sleep. Once the muffins were out of the oven and on the cooling rack, I filled that massive tub with jasmine-scented bubbles and jumped in with my book.

Only I quickly discovered that the jets wreaked havoc on the bubbles, as well as on my peace, because those jets inflated the bubbles to ridiculous proportions, pumping up the froth so high it was about to overflow all over the floor.

“ Shit! ” I turned off the jets but had to climb out of the tub and start bailing handfuls of bubbles out of the tub and into the bathroom sink because the bubbles kept forming exponentially.

If I flooded that luxurious bathroom, any shot I had at this lottery weekend might be screwed, so I was in a full panic as I pulled the plug and kept scooping out bubbles.

I imagined I was quite a sight, running back and forth, naked, with handfuls of frothy clouds in my arms, and I couldn’t stop cursing myself for being so flighty as I repeatedly attempted to corral airy puffs of bubbles into the marble sink.

“What did you think was going to happen?” I said to myself as I rushed back and forth, annoyed that I’d been so obsessed with the idea of reading in the tub that I’d failed to use my brain.

I was pretty sure this wasn’t what Lauren meant when she suggested I run around without pants.

It took me nearly an hour to get the tub drained and under control, and I was going to have to clean the sink and vanity in the morning, after all the bubbles were finally gone. I was exhausted when I finally climbed into Declan’s huge bed, so exhausted that I didn’t even turn on the TV.

I flipped off the lights and burrowed my wet head into his pillow.

And then my phone buzzed.

“Come on ,” I muttered. When I picked it up off the nightstand, I recognized the number as Declan’s.

ARE YOU STILL AWAKE?

I held the phone above me in the dark, too tired to lift my head as I texted: I don’t know who this is.

He replied an instant later: IT’S YOUR BELOVED BOYFRIEND

That made me smile and message: Oh, hey, boo.

Declan: PLEASE TELL ME YOU’VE NEVER ACTUALLY CALLED A BOYFRIEND BOO

I texted: Please tell me you don’t always use all caps like this. Feels threatening. Stop yelling at me, boo.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for him to call me. I lifted the phone to my ear and said, “Hey, boo.”

“Are you always so ridiculous, or am I just lucky?”

“Hmm, I’d say both,” I said, rolling onto my side. “What can I do for you, love of my life?”

“I have a problem,” he said, and he sounded… tired.

“Oh?”

“Oh, yeah. It seems my hotel is overbooked for tonight, which means someone else is sleeping in my room. I’ve looked into it, and it also seems that every hotel in the city is full because of the shareholder weekend.”

“Oh.” I felt bad. I was in his comfy bed, and he was…well, not .

“So I’m sure it’s going to cost me, but would you consider—with very strict rules, of course—allowing me to stay in my guest room, just for the weekend?”

“What?”

I was instantly wide-awake and reaching for the lamp. Was he asking to stay in his condo with me?

“Relax,” he said calmly. “The choice is yours so no need to stress; if you say no, that seals it because we had a deal. But what I’m proposing is that you allow me to sleep in the guest room for the next two nights.

I won’t get in your way, and the second the sun comes up each morning, I will exit the premises and you’ll have the place to yourself all day. I just need somewhere to sleep.”

Declan Powell was going to ruin the joy of my little retreat, but I couldn’t say no, could I? I mean, it was his place.

“Can’t you sleep in one of your cars?” I asked. “I mean, one must be a glamorous RV or someth—”

“Please,” he said, and the exhaustion in his voice got to me, especially when he added, “It’s one o’clock and I literally have nowhere to crash for the night.”

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. RIP, no-pants weekend.

“Okay?” He sounded surprised. “You…are all right with this?”

“I mean, you aren’t a creep or a murderer, are you?”

“I am not.”

Lauren will be the judge of that.

“And you’re not trying to, like…make a move on me, right?” I asked.

“Definitely not,” he said, sounding horrified.

“Don’t say it like that, like it’s a disgusting idea. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I think you’re gross, too.”

“Excellent. So then…”

He still sounded confused, like he was waiting for me to punk him or something. “Well I’m already comfy in your bed, so can you just use your key and let yourself in?”

“Of course,” he said. “But what do you want in exchange?”

“For…letting you stay here?” Now I felt confused.

“Yes.”

“Nothing. I mean, what are you offering?” God, I had no idea how to deal with someone so transactional. “It’s your place, so why would you have to give me something to sleep here?”

“Because it’s not what we originally agreed upon.”

“Okay, well, I appreciate the thought,” I said, knowing I should probably take advantage of his money-centric nature, but I was too exhausted to think. “But taking more than the already bonkers forty would be obscenely bonkers. Just don’t get in my way or be a jerk and we’re good.”

“Really?” He cleared his throat and said, “Well, thank you, Abi.”

“So…are we good? Can we hang up?” I didn’t know how to deal with him being nice. “I need to get a good night’s rest if I’m going to become a dreamboat girlfriend in the morning.”

“Well I can’t mess with that possibility, now can I?”

“No, you cannot. Good night, Powell.”

“Good night, Mariano.”

After I hung up, I had trouble falling asleep, which was shocking when I was so exhausted.

But Declan Powell, a stranger who was paying me thousands of dollars to pretend to be his girlfriend, was coming over to sleep under the same roof I was sleeping under.

Was this a fever dream?

Was I high?

Nothing made sense about this, and only time would tell if I’d scored the jackpot of a lifetime, or if I’d just made my biggest mistake.